Jan082007

Yahoo to preview Messenger for Windows Vista

New features to allow people to express themselves more easily through Messenger, says Yahoo!

Yahoo will give users a preview of what it will be like to use a new and improved version of Yahoo Messenger on Microsoft’s Windows Vista at the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show this year.

Yahoo will show off an early version of Yahoo Messenger optimised for Vista, with new features that take advantage of some of the user interface enhancements Microsoft has added to the OS.

“It feels very much at home as though it’s living and breathing in Windows Vista,” says Joshua Jacobson, a Yahoo senior product manager, of the version of Messenger built for Vista. The company plans to release a beta of the application in the second quarter of 2007, and a final version should be available four to six weeks after that, pending feedback, he says.

Windows Vista is already available for business users, and is expected to be available to consumers on January 30.

Yahoo used the new GUI (graphical user interface) development framework in Vista called Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) as the basis for several of the new features of Messenger. New abilities to scale up in size the avatar and contact information for people in a user’s contact list, a colour wheel that allows users to choose a new color for Messenger’s skin, and a feature that shows a large-sized emoticon that goes beyond the boundaries of the Messenger window before shrinking to its normal size all use WPF, Jacobson says.

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Deepak Gupta is a IT & Web Consultant. He is the founder and CEO of diTii.com & DIT Technologies, where he's engaged in providing Technology Consultancy, Design and Development of Desktop, Web and Mobile applications using various tools and softwares. Sign-up for the Email for daily updates. Google+ Profile.